Investagation of cord blood cortisole and blood glucose levels at delivery

The delivery causes the most important stress hormone alterations of the body;`cortisol? to be released from the adrenal cortex by simulation of the fetal and the maternalsystems to the maximum level and forming up a physiological stress on both the baby and themother. In most of mammals, the fetal adrenal cortex play an important role on thespontaneity of the delivery. But there are not absolute evidence on whether the similarmechanisms are active in the human beings. In past researches, the existance of differentamount of corticosteroid in different ways of delivery has been explained as ` the role of fetaladrenalin on the start of spontaneous labor ? while the others have reasoned it as `the responseof the fetus to the vaginal delivery sterss it has been exposed to?In our study, the cord blood level of the 112 newborns who have given delivery in thehospitals after the event of delivery has started ( they have had a gestational age of 27 to 42weeks) have been compared in terms of way of delivery, gestation week, number ofgestations, fetal weight, blood types and fetal sex. Then the relation between the cord bloodcortisol level and the blood glucose.The comparison of the cordon blood cortisol levels newborns who were deliverednormal vaginal raute or the cesarean saction resulted in a significant difference (p <0.05).The comparison of the same item in terms of gestation duration showed that the infants morethan 37 weeks old had significant higer cord blood cortisol level than the ones smaller than 37weeks. The cord blood cortisol levels of the newborns that weighed more than 2500 gramswere higher than the ones lower than this weight (p<0.05). Significan correlation betweenblood glucose and all the three tems ` the cord blood cortisol level, fetal weight and durationof gestation ? has been fixed. The gender and the blood types of the newborns were found tobe not effective on the cortisol level and blood glucose (p >0.05).It has been concluded that the cord blood cortisol level rises when the begining ofdelivery, and it supports the other factors that start the delivery It is also concluded that thehigh level of cord blood cortisol fascilitates the adaptaton of the newborns to the extrauterinlife.Key words: Cortisol, Cord Blood, Glucose